


In Plain Sight

by Halosis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Case Fic, Gen, High School, Horror, One Shot, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 11:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30004131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halosis/pseuds/Halosis
Summary: Griffin's day as a high school student starts normally, with a new student in social studies class and his friend's teacher out on medical leave. But it gets worse with the discovery of a haunted room covered in spider webs, leaving the new kid and his freshmen brother his only hope of survival. Who knew a small town high school could be hiding such dirty secrets?
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	In Plain Sight

Small towns, for all their shortcomings, possess constants that no other place could hope to achieve. The church bell will ring every Sunday, as it has done for all seventeen years of Griffin’s life and a hundred before his birth. The wrecked Ford will always sit broken in front of the town hall, taking up two in-demand spaces; the police trooper’s siren lights will never work in tandem, the school will never replace the sign broken in a freak storm thirty years prior, Joe the Newspaper Man will continue to work every day, even Sundays (“Because there’s always work to be done, even if the postal system doesn’t agree”-Joe). The sun will rise and fall, the swallows will wail into endless summer nights, and no one will ever leave because that’s just not how small towns work, because nothing changes faster than a snail in a town where people move to die, the only young blood the families they drag along with them.

Griffin’s new classmate seems gleefully ignorant of this all. Swaggering in with a too-big leather jacket and the stench of motor oil, he doesn’t look anything other than bored. Just glances at the empty teacher’s desk and walks to the back of the class. Mr. Newman hasn’t bothered to show yet- probably getting the last puffs out of his cigarette before he returns to work- and new kid is pretty indifferent about it, slouching into a seat in the last row, a seat away from Griffin.

New kid can’t sit still. The tapping of his foot is enough to drive Griffin to drink. Griffin’s head throbs in beat of the boot slapping the floor, aftereffects of a night spent hanging out at the river with his football teammates and some prissy private school girls they dragged along with them. He would smile at the memories if he had more than a shaky recollection of the night, the brisk winds and body heat and stupid teenage decisions, and more pressingly if his brain didn’t feel like it was melting out of his eyeballs.

So continues the tapping. Griffin’s organs shake in time with each bootslap, rattling against his ribs and the ends of his patience. Other students chat around them, but in the island of Griffin’s mind their words are foreign and unrecognizable. Something about classwork, and upcoming tests, someone got a new dog? It’s too much. Pressure is building, building, building in his head, and building and building and-

“Will you just fucking stop?” Griffin snaps at new kid, wrenching around in his seat to glare angrily.

New kid’s eyes lift from his desk to Griffin, a wolfish green stare. “Sure,” he says, grabbing a pencil to fidget with while he steadies his foot. Griffin notices the sharp bags under his eyes before they both look away, distracted by the sounds of the bell and Mr. Newman finally appearing.

“Well class, sorry I’m late today. Grading just sucks me in sometimes. It’s very riveting,” Mr. Newman says, as if his students can’t smell the smoke clinging to his sweater vest, or see the slight burns on his cuff. “Now, before we can start our lesson for today, there’s a matter we need to attend to. You see, there’s a new student in the class.” Newman’s eyes scan the rows, landing on new kid. “Please stand up and introduce yourself.”

New kid rises to his feet up with a breathless sigh. “I’m Dean,” is all he says before returning to his chair.

Newman looks expectantly at Dean for a moment, before growing impatient of Dean’s bored expression. “How about you tell us a bit about yourself before we move on? Your last name, where you’re from, whatever you want to add?”

“The name’s Winchester, and I’m from Kansas.” Dean doesn’t bother standing up to answer.

The eyes of the entire class are on Dean, and Griffin spots two girls sitting in the front nudging each other, allergic to any form of subtlety. Newman gives Dean a side-eye as he walks to the chalkboard, but doesn’t press for any more information.

“Today we’ll be covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and the events leading up to the end of the Cold War...” Newman writes out a few sections in white blocky letters but Griffin can’t be bothered to read them- the screeches of chalk cloud everything. His head starts to throb and throb, and just when he thinks it’s ending, Dean starts tapping his fucking foot again.

Griffin lets out a slow, labored breath, and against his better judgement sticks his head to his desk. Boot squeaks continue from Dean, but at least the darkness is comforting. Eyes bore into Griffin’s head- he can feel it from the front of the room, can visualize the exasperated expression on Newman’s face.

Footsteps, pounding, getting closer. For the sake of his sanity, Griffin ignores it with a fervor that would make him an A+ student if he applied it to his studies.

“Griffin, what do you think you’re doing?”

Griffin lifts his head to see Newman standing above him. Dean stops tapping his foot and instead watches the exchange with a blank face.  
“New kid what’s-his-name won’t stop bothering me. It’s a defense mechanism.”

The cheerleaders laugh from Griffin’s right flank, more from obligation than anything else. Newman glares at them from behind tortoiseshell glasses. “That is absolutely not the way to speak of a new student. Griffin, if you have any further issues either speak to me first or I’ll be forced to give you a detention.”

Of any time for Newman to have a stick up his ass, does it really have to be now? Griffin nods and smiles halfheartedly at Newman, a curt “Of course, sir,” escaping from his mouth. He looks down at his desk, and hopes, prays, begs for Newman to leave him alone, to let him wait out class in peace.

Newman barely acknowledges Griffin, giving him one final glance before returning to the front of the room. “Now, moving on to George H. W. Bush...” Newman begins, regaining the attention of seventeen tired students (sixteen, not including Griffin).

Griffin ignores him, finding it even easier to zone out than usual. The trick, Griffin believes, is to focus on the pain and the headache instead of disregarding it, creating a tunnel vision of misery that simply blocks out all outside stimuli. Including. but not limited to, Dean.

Dean. Over the next hour of class Griffin glances over to him from time to time, sitting there with a blank face. He still taps his foot but Griffin can’t muster the energy to do anything about it.

And so class continues until the bells ring to mark the end of set. Griffin rolls his head back, breathing in slowly and avoiding the backwards glances of some classmates as they exit the room. Taking his sweet time, Griffins stretches, yawning, reaching down towards his bag shoved halfway under the desk. By the time he slings his backpack across his shoulder, Dean had long since hightailed it out of class.

Out into the corridor and through the halls, walking past clumps of friends and frantic studiers, forcefully oblivious to the world around him. Griffin the zombie makes it to his next class in one piece and promptly zones out for the next hour. None of his friends are here; there’s no one interesting to stare at or make fun of. There goes the bell again. Back out the door, back into the hallway. Walking, walking, walking-

“Ayo, Griff, over here!” shouts Griffin’s friend from the other side of the corridor.

Griffin jolts into focus at the sound of Zach’s voice, a voice he hadn’t heard since last night at the river. Next to Zach stands a preppy blonde, hair tied in a side pony and a plaid skirt around her waist. She hadn’t gone with them- said something about getting grounded and ruining future career choices and what have you.

As a unit, the three walk towards their classes, taking strides in unison. Griffin’s head continues to pound but he can’t do anything about it. At least he’s in less pain now than he was in twenty minutes ago.

“Having a rough day?” Anne, that’s her name, scans over Griffin with piercing blue eyes.

“You bet. Think I’ll skip next set just to stay sane. Wanna join?” Griffin knows they can’t.

“Wish I could. Senora Suzuki’s a bitch, but my grade can’t take missing class. And you know how my parents’ll react if I fail again,” says Zach.

“I really don’t get why you chose to take Spanish again this year. I promise it’s not worth the pain,” Anne pipes in, resting her head against Zach’s shoulder.

“Come on, I didn’t have a choice. My mom was on my ass all last year about ‘continuing the cognitive journey of learning new languages.’ Trust me, the fight wasn’t worth it. And we have a sub today anyway. Suzuki’s on medical leave or somethin’ like that. ”

They all stop talking for a moment, footsteps echoing in the hallway alongside random students’ voices. There, closer and closer, is Anne’s next class.

“Here’s my stop,” Anne says as she walks into room 135 for AP Physics.

“See ya around,” Zach replies while Griffin just nods as goodbye. Zach tilts his head, looks Griffin in the eye, but stops- his lips remain sealed. Quiet lays between them. A few steps down the hall and Zach makes it to his own class.

Alone again, Griffin stands still for a moment. The hall empties fast as students reach their destinations, Griffin a motionless figure amid their sea of desertion. He stands there, plotting, in mental search of a place to wait out the period. But shouldn’t it be obvious? And with a little bit of thinking it is. No teachers give him trouble on his way there- Griffin had long since mastered the art of Looking Like He Belongs Here. Confidence really is key.

He strolls for a while, shoulders back and easy stride. His head throbs and he ignores it. There, snaking behind the auditorium, sits a room used seldom outside of extra storage or assemblies. The emptiness within it calls to him, reaching its tendrils around his aching mind. A flimsy wooden door is all that stands between. His hand latches on the doorknob (cheap, but the color of gold). A turn, a creak, and the door swings open, the illumination of the hallway meeting the darkness inside. He freezes at the entrance.

From the corners and the walls drape spiderwebs, glistening in the halo of seeping light. Head tilted down, gazing at the floor, the edges where the walls meet the ground, and he lifts his arm towards the nearest web. His hand grazes the silk, catching the wet threads between his fingers. Droplets spill onto his floor from the motion. It’s just water resting on his boots, nothing ominous, yet he shivers, movement reaching from his spine all along his body.

A flicker of action. There, at the edge of his vision, the shadows shifting. A leg, feminine, almost human. He jerks his head up, eyes falling back into focus. Boxes line the walls of the room, filled with ratty theater costumes no one bothered to mend or throw out. A crown, plastic and dusty, peaks from the top of one, a discolored cape from another, grey tile flooring beneath it all. But nothing moves within the room anymore.

Griffin breaks the pause when he takes a few steps away from the doorway. Only the ringing in his ears and the squeak of his footsteps interrupt the silence.

A gust tousles Griffin’s curtained hair, the whistle of a quick breeze, the forest of webs flittering along with it. Echoes of a slam dance through the room with no discernible source. His body can sense it all, all from behind him, just a breadth out of conscious understanding. Then nothing. And so he turns, slowly, eyes wide and muscles tense, to face the door. It’s closed.

And it’s different. Eyebrows furrowed, he reaches forward, hands sliding over flaking cedar and chipped paint. Then more, and more, and as he frantically pushes on the center of the door with his side, he finds that whatever space existed below it has been replaced with more of the same painted wood. No doorknob, no gap, just a slab in the wall. His shoulder digs deeper and deeper, pushing, pushing to no avail. Panting, rapid blinks.

In a flicker of hazy light the door shakes, the handle jingles, dust floats in from the space between the door and the wall. Griffin fumbles for the doorknob, sweat seeping from his hands. His heart pounds two feet out of his chest within the safety of his ribcage. Dark, bright, dark, bright, dark, dark, dark-- an epileptic lightshow, he can’t explain it, can barely sense it, let alone understand it. But he stops pushing, and so he slides down, limp against the floor. His head rests against his knees and his arms squeeze against his chest, hugging his whole body into itself. The glimpse of a tear streams down his cheek.

For a minute he doesn’t move. Then slowly, carefully, he opens one eye, then the other. It’s the same room but there’s something off. The details are different. No windows or artificial lights adorn the walls yet Griffin has no trouble seeing. The boxes are gone, replaced with floor-to-ceiling spider webs. There’s still no door in sight. He glances from side to side, bracing his hand on the wall to pull himself up. He wipes stray webbing off of his arms as he stands, then takes a closer look at his surroundings. Takes a deep breath and notes the lack of headache. He exhales, ready to face the horrors that await him.

Trapped within the webs are small bundles. He creeps toward the nearest one, stepping lightly, careful not to make a sound. Woven threads encapsulate the animal, that’s what it is, maybe a dog? It’s hard to tell underneath all the layers. He leans forward, ignoring the warning signals in his brain, needing answers, wanting closure, anything, just an explanation for whatever the fuck is going on.

There it is, the fucking headache again. He moves his hands away from the web and rests his head in his palms instead. It’s like before but worse, so much worse, the pain blossoms in neon speckles and flashing spouts of agony. Is this what a migraine feels like? He’s heard of them before, but they’ve always seem so distant and unreal, an urban legend of sorts.The pressure in his head is joined by a pressure on his shoulder, pushing his torso down, then his arms and his hands and his legs and his everything but he’s helpless, can’t push or escape or move or anything, it’s all too much. He can barely see through the throbbing but there’s a glimpse of a face, a woman, Zach’s Spanish teacher? She grins at him, then pushes him to the ground with three spider-limbs, and the world grows dark beneath piles of webbing.

***

“Come on man, wake up…”

Griffin opens his eyes to New Kid Dean standing above him, his leather jacket draping over half of Griffin’s body. “I’m fine. God, get off of me,” he grumbles, pushing Dean away with a feeble shove.

“Woah there buddy, I’m not trying to hurt you. We’re the ones that saved you, Goddamit,” Dean grumbles. Next to him stands a lanky boy, stereotypically freshmen, with long, choppy bangs and innocent deer-eyes. They’re both riddled with scratches, and brittle stains cover their clothes. In his hands…. is that a gun? Dean has one too, along with a butcher’s knife, dripping with prop blood.

It stinks like rust and raw meat, and Jesus Christ that’s not prop blood it’s real, all the props are undisturbed in their boxes, come to think of it when did all the boxes come back? And there’s the door, it’s closed but it exists, there’s an exit and a way out and that’s all that matters. But in front of it, next to Dean, there’s a corpse, headless, a woman but with a spider’s body and eight legs and blood, blood everywhere, her guts are ripped and spilling in a squelching ooze, intestines two feet from her body. Her body ends at her neck, shredded strips of spine and muscle where her head should begin. His eyes follow the trail of splatters from her body to her head, Mrs. Suzuki frozen in a violent end. Griffin scrambles backwards on his hands and knees, tripping over residual spider webs and slipping in pools of blood.

“What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck! You killed a teacher! How—wha—they’ll arrest us! It’s murder, oh my God, my parents’ll kill me way before the courts can.” His breaths speed up, the world’s spinning, adrenaline only makes things worse, and he’s choking, can barely get down air, wants to cry and sob and scream. He’d run from police once, last year, they’d been hanging out in some construction site, trespassing, but nobody cared, right? But somebody did apparently, cops were called, the cops didn’t care much, they only came because they had to. Zach had laughed, out of breath, once they’d run to safety, rambling about the fun of the chase. Griffin laughed along with him, it’s an image thing, but there was nothing funny about it, and he almost threw up when he got home. Breaking rules is only fun when there’s no consequence. But this… death isn’t fun or consequenceless or acceptable. It’s over, no future, no second chances, no life. Griffin rocks back and forth, back and forth, there’s nothing he can do.

“Um, it’ll be okay. Dean’s dealing with it. He knows what to do.” The freshman’s voice hasn’t cracked with puberty but he sounds confident, reassuring. He lays a hand on Griffin’s shoulder, and Griffin stares back at him with tears welling in his eyes. “I’m Sam, by the way,” He sits down next to Griffin, criss-cross applesauce. “I’m Dean’s brother.”

Griffin can hear shambling behind him, presumably Dean cleaning up their mess. He doesn’t turn to watch. His stomach couldn’t take it.

There’s a rustle of a garbage bag opening, and Dean plops Suzuki’s body into it in gorey bits and pieces. “Sammy, could ya grab me a mop?”

“Sure,” Sam says back, then turns back to Griffin, speaking softly like he’s a wounded animal. “I need to help Dean, but I’ll be back soon, okay? You’ll be fine.”

Sam shuffles out of the room, making as little noise as possible. Griffin doesn’t watch him leave, he’s still facing the wall, trying to wish himself out of existence but it’s just not working. The room’s cooler than before, like the blanket of night. There’s no windows, no clocks, no way to track the time. Just his murderous classmate.

Dean trails into a sentence. “...so, I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself, but I’m the new guy from Newman’s class, Dean.”

“Yeah, I remember you. What time is it?”

“No clue. Maybe 7? School ended a few hours ago.”

So, Zach left school without looking for him? Disappointing. “How am I still alive? It’s been hours.”

“Oh, that bitch was saving you for later. She had other stuff to eat first, like that poor Toto back there. Not sure what happened to it. When I ganked her a lot of her illusions shattered so I’m not sure how much you saw was, ya know, real.” Dean isn’t moving or making noise. Probably waiting for Sam to come back to clean up blood.

Griffin nods, but he doesn’t understand. Not really. “What was she? Not a person. Right? She looked like a person. Nothing makes sense anymore.”

“A monster’s a monster, no matter how human it looks. I got no clue what she was, but she’s dead and that’s what counts. It’s a victory in my book.” Dean’s voice is steady, confident with spouting extremes. Griffin hadn’t bothered paying attention to it in class but it’s deep too, almost comically—like he’s doing a constant Batman impression. He sure acts like he’s doing a Batman impression, all vigilante and brooding and violent to the core.

Sam’s back, mop in hand, and Griffin hears the squelch of it as they clean up the blood, still refusing to face the horrors in the room. For once the darkness is comforting. He sits, eyes squeezed shut, while Dean whispers instructions and reflections to Sam, but he doesn’t bother to listen in. Time is broken, that’s it, Griffin has no comprehension of it at all, no clue of how long he waits for them to finish. Frankly, it doesn’t matter—no one bothers checking this room, even the janitors, outside of play season.

“Are you done? Can I go now?” Griffin asks as he rises from the ground, his balance royally fucked from the violent shakes racking all over his body.

“Yeah, pretty much. We’ve done what we can do.”

Finally Griffin musters the courage to glance at the scene of the crime, but there’s nothing left to look at. Everything’s pristine, sparkling clean like never before. Just like that, any evidence of Suzuki’s death is gone. Is that how he’ll die when it’s his time, with nothing left to show his struggles or darkness or hidden desires, leaving behind only the victims of his own actions? Here stands Suzuki’s legacy, a student and two hollow-eyed felons wearing the skins of innocent teenagers. But Griffin can’t be anything like her. Maybe leaving a mark on the world is overrated. Maybe a nothing job in a nowhere town with no acknowledgement is the true American dream, but yet again wasn’t that Suzuki? No one else knew what she had done, only three high school boys with no credibility to their names. That’s still no acknowledgment. But then it occurs to Griffin, maybe they weren’t the only ones…

“Has she done this before?” Griffin walks to stand beside Sam as Dean hoists the body bag over his shoulder.

“Yes, actually. There’s been a trail of missing and dead high school students throughout the state, and Suzuki was the one connection. We think she was a jorogumo,” Sam says as he follows Dean out of the room and out of the school. Griffin trails behind them, too scared to walk beside them or worse, be left alone. “According to the lore, they’re Japanese spider women. I think that would count as a shapeshifter? It’s a bit complicated, to be honest.”

“Hmm. Okay.” Griffin ponders over what the monolithic “lore” entails. Is that code for random horror books? Or maybe the satanic Bible? Or maybe it’s nothing at all, just bullshit made up by two lunatics one wrong move away from Child Protective Services. And here is Griffin, one small move away from leaving the high school’s back door, to the parking lot and the world beyond where everything’s wrong and wicked and cruel. He sees the monsters lurking in the shadow of the fence and under the tire of the principal’s car and even deep with his own mind. If his teacher was a monster, then isn’t everything else? The town around him, once comforting in its quaint size, now suffocates him with the promise of evil lurking within. Why did everything have to change?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is my first published fic so any feedback or constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.


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